


Let Me Tell You About Quinn

by Nitrobot



Category: Original Work
Genre: Afterlife, Bunny heaven, in memoriam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 10:08:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14162505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nitrobot/pseuds/Nitrobot
Summary: Somebunny slept in for her meeting with the Rabbit God.





	Let Me Tell You About Quinn

**Author's Note:**

> My rabbit Quinn died on Tuesday night. It's the first pet death I've dealt with and with how sudden it was it's been hard dealing with it. I wrote this to help me feel a little better about where she might be now, and as a memorial to how unique she was.

When she awoke, she wanted to go back to sleep. She wasn’t hungry. She couldn’t smell food, or probing hands nearby. So why should she wake up?

The blinding light bleeding through her eyelids told her why. Usually it would be yapping from those ugly bug-eyed creatures who would sniff and stalk around her home. But she did not see one of them through the bars, stinking of meat and damp. There were no bars at all. The ground below was green, soft, but not hay. 

And this rude awakening did not come from a quake outside, or a bark or slam from afar. This thing, a male seemingly from its size, watched her from amidst the white that was not walls, the white that stretched as far as the soft green strands below it did.

At first he seemed to blend into the white, not a single flaw to be seen, but then his nose twitched. 

Another one of her.

She promptly started biting him.

“I see why you weren’t allowed near other rabbits.” He did not fight back, yet somehow he managed to pull away from the fury of her teeth. When she tried to continue the assault, she couldn’t reach forward far enough- or move at all.

“Look, I’d usually go about this more gently but, you’re dead. No shooting- or biting- the messenger is going to change that.”

Her paws scrabbled against the grass as she tried to break free of whatever was holding her down- a vet, maybe! She’d tear through their fingers if she could find them, before they could cut her teeth and nails down out of fear of what she could do with them!

She’d deal with that later, though. After she’d understood what the giant glowing idiot had accused her of.  
Dead? She didn’t know what being dead was like, but it surely wasn't this. If she was dead, she wouldn’t have her eyes open! If she was dead, she wouldn’t be able to hear this moron _tell_ her that she was dead!

If she was dead… 

If she was dead, she wouldn’t be at home.

This wasn’t home.  
Where was her hutch? Where was her hay, the cold metal spout that would give her water? Her food bowl, which she knew she hadn’t knocked away? Her own fur, shedded and mixed so firmly within her bed?

“Now that I have your attention, Quinn,” the immense shining dolt went on, with that word the tall things would throw at her (sometimes the largest one would coo “Quinnie”, and she’d be left wishing it would make up its mind already). “I can tell you about what happens next. This is but a tiny part of- hey! Get back here!”

She didn’t have time for this! Wherever her hutch was, she had to find it before someone saw she was gone and got the bright idea of clearing out all her painstakingly arranged hay. She grunted as she hopped, sniffing insistently for anything that wasn’t nothing, anything that wasn’t the horrifically stale nothingness all around her.  
She didn’t get very far, before another invisible hand wrapped around her and held her in place. She started digging at the grass beneath her- if she got low enough, she could escape! The giant beacon of flop-eared idiocy loomed over her still, and ground his teeth together.

“As I was _trying_ to say, you’re in heaven. All animals go to their own heaven. Sometimes it crosses over with those of other creatures. Here, in your rabbit heaven, you will never want for anything. You’ll never be hunted. You’ll never be hungry. If you want, say, a stem of kale, you only need to think of it and it will appear like-”

The kale materialised upon his paw, a single second before she lunged forward to snatch it up. It was devoured by the time he finished his sigh of defeat, not a single leaf left behind. She was, in fact, very hungry. She couldn’t remember when she last ate.  
...She couldn’t remember much at all.

“Not only that,” he went on, ignoring the thump of her foot as she demanded more food, “you’ll be surrounded by countless other members of your species, those who have also passed on.” Suddenly the endless grass seemed much less lonely. Shapes emerged from the ground out of nowhere; some ears towering, others hanging limply astride scrunched faces and wiggling noses, brown and black and white and grey. Sharing dandelions and softly grooming cheeks and backs. Not a single one looked like her, but that was no surprise. No one could be as pretty as her.

“You’ll never be lonely,” the large thing boldly assumed. “Though… _you_ might struggle finding someone to get along with. Maybe don’t bite as soon as you meet them.”

She surveyed the endless others, and was not impressed. How was she supposed to properly sleep with all of this shuffling, grunting and grinding? And what of sharing food? It would be a nightmare!  
This would not do at all. She had to get home _immediately_. She thumped again, grunting loudly as she hopped in a defiant circle.

“What’s wrong?” the ever-annoying thing asked. “Just hop along and that’ll be you for eternity.”

Her circle only got smaller until she was just going back and forth to slam her back paws down. The only hopping she’d be doing is right back into her hutch!

“Look, calm down already!” There must have been something wrong with his legs, all he could do was twitch his whiskers sternly at her.  
“I _am_ obligated to tell you about the second option… _reincarnation_.” This annoying ball of not-fur spat it out like rotten cabbage, but at this point she’d have gratefully eaten some. “But you don’t want that. Why would _anyone_ want that?”

She impatiently waited for him to go on, stretched up on her back legs.

“Er… reincarnation involves your spirit going into a new vessel. You’ll have no memories of the life you just left, and there’s no telling where you’ll end up. Better to just be happy here than take the risk.”

She was really getting annoyed at this upstart overglorified lantern assuming what she wanted to do. And he seemed to guess as much.

“Are… are you sure?”

She chucked her chin insistently. If he kept asking stupid questions, she’d have to bite him again.

“It’s… well, it’s not a very popular choice, you see. There’s no guarantee your next life will be any good. You might be a single stem of grass, or a dog. Or one of those hairless pink things!”

She remained sat on her haunches, utterly undeterred. This place was looking more boring by the minute, and maybe she wanted to see some hairless pink things! Maybe she wanted to be given embarrassing names, or to give herself one! Maybe she wanted to lock herself out of her own home! She had more vets to fight, more bowls to knock over, more strange colourful screens to look at and then get yelled at for jumping onto them!  
Most of all, she wanted to spite this know-it-all.  
And she wanted more kale. She had to thump again before she got any of that.

“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He moved for the first time, hopping aside to reveal a tear in the white. A rip? Some kind of door. It got darker the further down it stretched to nowhere.

“Your next life is through this gate,” he said through slow, careful twitches of his whiskers. He must have been copying her. “If you change your mind, go backwards. Though if you go too far you... “

She was already through it, about time she finally started getting somewhere. Far behind, he sighed for the last time.

“Did she even understand a single word I said?”

Quinn wasn’t sure when she crossed the point of no return. She didn’t want to return. There was someone she had yet to say goodbye to.


End file.
